The median home-sale price increased 16% year over year to $331,590—an all-time high—according to a new report from Redfin (redfin.com), the technology-powered real estate brokerage. However, year-over-year comparisons may more reflect the fact that this time last year, stay-at-home-orders halted both home-buying and selling activity. They don’t necessarily reflect how the housing market has changed over the past year.
Below are other key housing market takeaways for more than 400 U.S. metro areas during the 4-week period ending March 21.
“It’s concerning how much home prices have risen during the pandemic,” said Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather. “When the pandemic is over, purchasing a home is going to cost much more than ever before, putting homeownership much further out of reach for many Americans. That means a future in which most Americans will not have the opportunity to build wealth through home equity, which will worsen inequality in our society. The Biden administration is putting together an infrastructure bill right now that includes building 1.5 million sustainable homes, but there is no guarantee the bill will be passed with every policy proposal intact. America needs an audacious goal to increase the housing supply, given the U.S. is short 2.5 million homes. It may be expensive to build millions of homes, but ignoring the problem would only cause housing to become more unaffordable and worsen housing insecurity.”
Refer to Redfin’s metrics definition page for explanations of all the metrics used in the report.
About Redfin
Redfin (www.redfin.com) is a technology-powered residential real estate company, redefining real estate in the consumer’s favor in a commission-driven industry. We do this by integrating every step of the home buying and selling process and pairing our own agents with our own technology, creating a service that is faster, better and costs less. We offer brokerage, iBuying, mortgage, and title services, and we also run the country’s #1 nationwide brokerage website, offering a host of online tools to consumers, including the Redfin Estimate. We represent people buying and selling homes in over 95 markets in the United States and Canada. Since our launch in 2006, we have saved our customers nearly $1 billion and we’ve helped them buy or sell more than 310,000 homes worth more than $152 billion.
For more information or to contact a local Redfin real estate agent, visit www.redfin.com. To learn about housing market trends and download data, visit the Redfin Data Center. To be added to Redfin’s press release distribution list, email press@redfin.com.